Black America’s top networking guru, business consultant and true believer in the potential greatness of African American people, George C. Fraser, is headed to Birmingham with a message fitting the historical import of his arrival on April 3, the date on which the 1963 Birmingham Campaign began.
Fifty years ago, on April 3, Birmingham’s fiery civil rights leader, the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, read The Birmingham Manifesto that launched the historic Birmingham Movement, starting with boycotts of segregated department store lunch counters. The Movement later turned into mass demonstrations, including the scenes of non-violent child protestors besieged by police dogs and high-powered fire hoses.
And on April 3, 1968, Shuttlesworth’s iconic contemporary, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his last speech in Memphis that was filled with his plans for economic advancement that would help his people reach “the Promised Land.” But Dr. King was assassinated the next day; his plans essentially died with him and his plans remain unfulfilled to this day.
Fraser’s motivational message for Birmingham is a message for Blacks across the nation and around the world: the next phase of the Freedom Movement must focus on resource management and cooperative economics through networking to create and economic prosperity and generational wealth.
Black people are not poor, the Cleveland-based businessman says. Rather, we are mentally broke.
“African Americans are a $920-billion economy. If we were a nation, we’d be the 19th richest in the world. But our money goes in one direction – away from us,” Fraser says. “We are some of America’s most conspicuous consumers.
“Therefore, it’s clearly time for us to unite. God has given us everything we need to succeed except one thing – each other. Until we learn how to love ourselves, how to love each other, how to network and collaborate with each other, we will not receive anything else from God.”
Fraser uses history to inspire African Americans’ desire to achieve the potential for greatness that’s bound in them. For more than 200 years, they worked together in a long and brutal campaign for civil and human rights to end slavery. They struggled another 100 years after the Civil War to finally achieve first-class American citizenship.
Under such local leaders like Rev. Shuttlesworth and Dr. King;s national renown, along with scores of other activist preachers and citizens of good conscience in the nation, they achieved one of the world’s greatest human revolutions through love, cooperation and strategic action. So Fraser believes that African Americans possess a unique potential to bring about positive change, for themselves and the world at large.
But the struggle is not yet over.
As the City of Birmingham marks the 50th commemorative anniversary of the world-changing 1963 Birmingham Movement, Fraser hopes to inspire today’s civic and business leaders to continue their ancestors’ pioneering work by tackling the last challenge facing African Americans – building wealth and economic stability that is on par with other ethnic and racial groups.
There are two main obstacles that hinder the work, Fraser says. One, African Americans don’t help each other like other groups do. And two, we abuse and misuse the many resources that we control rather than leveraging them for greater economic and intellectual capital.
“When we unite and become better stewards of our resources, we demonstrate to the world and to ourselves that we are a force to be reckoned with,” he says. “Until such time we learn to do that, we just won’t get to the Promised Land.”
So he strives to de-program negative attitudes and instill a culture of success and empowerment among Blacks through his best-selling books, lectures and networking seminars.
Fraser, the Chairman and CEO of FraserNet, has spent the last 25 of his 67 years writing books like Success Runs In Our Race: The Complete Guide to Effective Networking in the African American Community to highlight Blacks who have already achieved success, despite seemingly insurmountable odds, through willpower, talent and personal networks that worked.
He’s on a mission to help Black people attain wealth that can be handed down to the next generation, and to help them become the No. 1 employer of each other in the 21st century.
To achieve that vision, the former corporate executive who spent 17 years at Procter & Gamble, Ford Motor Co., and United Way started FraserNet and its annual PowerNetworking Conference. He uses his skills to reconnect people of African descent in America and other parts of the world with each other, and connects them with other human resources that increase their chances for business and economic success.
EVENT DETAILS:
George C. Fraser of FraserNet
Location: Jazz Underground in Five Points South
Address: 2012 Magnolia Ave S, Birmingham, AL 35205
RSVP Phone:(205) 202-3640
Admission: $10 at the door
Networking Hour: 5 PM
Program: 6 PM to 8 PM
This event is a collaboration of online media and marketing partners: Urbanham.com, Birmingham View Magazine Online, The Birmingham Terminal, First Impressions Marketing (Birmingham 24/7 and What’s Happening Birmingham) and U-Metro Magazine, with UrbanProfessionals.com of Atlanta.
